A locally produced documentary asks questions about the Lillelid murders
by Adrienne Martini
Six years ago this week, on an isolated gravel road near Greeneville, six teenagers shot a family of four after kidnapping them from a nearby I-81 rest stop. The Knox County parents, Vidar and Delfina Lillelid, and their grade-school-aged daughter Tabitha died from their wounds. Then-two-year-old Peter, the lone survivor, will forever bear physical and emotional damage from the crime.
There is no doubt that Natasha Cornett, Crystal Sturgill, Karen Howell, Joe Risner, Dean Mullins, and Jason Bryant are guilty of the April 6, 1997 murders. While the true events of that night are murky—all six offer different timelines—what is known is that this case became a media sensation. On the airwaves, this crime was boiled down to the basest facts: the Lillelid's devout Jehovah's Witness faith was pitted against the teenagers' interest in the occult.
What got lost in the bombast about good and evil was the breakdown in "the system" that is as complicit in the killings as the teens themselves. And that is where three East Tennessee filmmakers step in, six years later.
Dr. Helen Smith—whose The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill examines rampage killings and contains chapters on both the Lillelid and the Columbine shootings—hooked up with director Roman Karpynec and producer Brandon Ward. Karpynec previously spent most of his time on the other side of the lens and starred in last year's Valleyfest standout Reckoning Day. Ward started his film career at Atmosphere Pictures and has worked in advertising and on music videos. All three were here during at least some of the Lillelid coverage. And their response to the sensationalism of this case drives Six.
"We really wanted to get something that would look at what happened before," Smith explains. "What were the steps that they went through? What were their feelings about each of them? What about school? What about the mental health centers? What about all those family issues?"
The responses to these questions, however, aren't the point of Six, says Ward. "It's not about that. It's about making people change. Just bringing it up and putting it out there for people to marinate their mind in," he says.
The creation of this marinade, like so many indie film projects, was not without its challenges. The perennial favorite being, of course, money, a problem that Smith solved by bankrolling the project herself. After that comes co-operation from and access to the principle players in the lives of these kids, a task that has become more difficult in the intervening years.
"They're all on appeals so a lot of the kids are reluctant to talk," Smith says. "Their lawyers don't want them to talk. It's been really hard. The case has gone on for years. And this happens—a lot of times when you see a documentary, people have done them 10 years after the fact, when the case is cleared."
"I think that a lot of people are a lot more hesitant to talk to anyone in the media because of the way the media spun a lot of the things that were said," Ward says. "Ideally, we'd have had a nice soundstage and had everyone cooperate. Line them up out the door and have them know what the questions are. Everything would be all in place. But documentaries aren't like that."
Part of what makes the doc work is its rough-hewn grit, born from having to marry diverse media sources. Pooled courtroom footage, which looks like it was shot on cheap VHS and sounds like it was taped underwater, smacks against clean footage with clear sound. Spoken diary entries bridge the two at times, but the lasting effect is one of slick professionalism married to a down-home shoddiness. Somehow it works, and captures the tone of the whole case with sparse poetry.
This isn't a piece that could have been as expertly crafted by someone who hasn't spent time in these parts. While a left- or right-coast based production team could have brought more money or skill to the project, this story is uniquely Southern Appalachia's.
"I got attached to the stories because of the space these kids grew up in," Ward says. "You really get a sense of that driving around Pikeville. You really get up there in coal mining Kentucky, rock faces on every side..."
"...And it's claustrophobic," Karpynec finishes. "Everything kind of looms.
"My dad had a clinic—he was a neurologist—20 miles from Pikeville. We had a house there and I spent a lot of time in that area. My dad eventually died...and I can understand what led to his death, just a sense of environmental claustrophobia. It drives you mad, that area. I don't think you can come down here and just kind of pick up on that."
"I almost think [Six] will do better in New York and L.A., believe it or not," Smith adds. "It's so voyeuristic into the Tennessee life. It'll do well in Europe, too. People always want to see the crazy American hillbillies."
Which isn't to say that Six exploits the Lillelid murders. This documentary isn't about the blood, guts, and Satanism. Those seeking a traditional Court TV-style who-done-what should look elsewhere. Six is all about the issues.
"Medicaid will not fund anyone who has a mental disease or defect. They're just not paid for. They're supposed to get out and get help in the community—help that never materialized," Smith says. "These parents did call the police. People just don't take homicide threats seriously. People just ignore it and hope it goes away.
"The bigger issue is—we've got dangerous people out there in society, what do we do about it? We look at it and say—these people just sort of did this and we don't know why. We do know why. We don't do anything about it. We don't deal with the mentally ill. If somebody's sick, we don't keep them in a hospital. The police don't deal with them. The schools don't deal with them.
"If the systems won't deal with them and the families are having problems themselves—what do we do? We need to decide to deal with it as a society—or we just say, no, it's not our job but we are going to allow this to happen. And we're not going to be surprised about it."
Still, we as a society are surprised every time something like this happens, when teenagers pull out guns and decide to go on a rampage. It has become a frighteningly common event in the last few years, and Six is a catalyst for discussion. Even though it can be lumped with something larger, the Lillelid case is an individual tale of what can go wrong.
"Something that we had to leave out is [footage of] the defense attorney making his closing statement. He says how this story will always be told. This story will be handed down like a Southern folktale. It's something strangely special," Karpynec says.
"Everybody's heard of it, once you break it down—Lillelid. The rest stop thing. Jehovah's Witnesses. And then they're like, 'yeah, OK, I remember that.' But they don't. They don't recall the nuances. Those are the aspects of the story that need to be remembered."
April 3, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 14
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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